Bonding Time
by marymin
Summary: Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren make pancakes- Or rather, Ren makes pancakes and Pyrrha tries to help. Fits vaguely in with some of the book 1 events.


It was weeks into the school year, and 3 AM pancakes had already become a tradition.

At first, the cause had been Pyrrha's incessant pacing. No, going back further, it seemed the cause was Jaune and his issues and something rude he'd said to her on the roof. But they didn't find out about _that_ until the fifth pancake, when Pyrrha had slammed the syrup bottle down on the floorboards, breaking her silence with a distraught "I just don't_ understand_."

Pyrrha was like an open book, really, and while she'd done her best to keep Jaune's privacy on the issue up til now, once she'd started she just couldn't stop. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with her plate balanced on her knee, Nora was quiet for once, nodding as she listened. It was unclear whether she was silent to let Pyrrha talk, or because her cheeks were stuffed with pancake like a chipmunk. With a practiced twist of his wrist, Ren flipped a pancake in Nora's direction, and she held up her plate to catch it without looking. Then he went back to tending the (most certainly against school rules) hot plate, his shoulders and head angled towards Pyrrha so that she knew he was listening.

That was then, though, and these days pancakes in the middle of the night (and the middle of the day, too- pancakes were welcome at pretty much any time) were more of a celebration than a last minute resort. At least, there was far less of Pyrrha viciously stabbing at her meal in tormented silence, as if the pancakes were a foe to be defeated.

In some ways though, this was worse, because Pyrrha had started trying to _help_.

Nora wasn't one to follow rules in general, but she knew this one by heart: As long as she didn't touch the batter or the stove, she was allowed to eat the pancakes. From incidents in the past she knew that if she was allowed access to the batter _nobody_ got to eat it, because by then it was toxic and possibly on fire.

Pyrrha had no such experience to draw on, and so she towered over Ren like a helpfully-inclined brick wall, reaching out for the egg carton for the second time. As before, he swatted her hand away.

"I know how to crack an egg," she told him, her voice even and with an edge of a chuckle in it. It was a far cry from her frustrated rants (although even then she hadn't been _mean_, just at a loss for what to do.)

Ren didn't directly answer her statement either- it wasn't his business if she knew how to crack an egg or not. That was hardly the point here. "They'll be ready in half an hour," he replied, turning away from her when he was certain she wasn't going to try again. He sorted through the small bags and containers, retrieving flour and sugar from the box.

"That's all right, I think I'll help," Pyrrha insisted, either unaware of his resistance, or choosing to ignore it. From her bed, Nora paused in the middle of inserting a straw into the mouth of the syrup bottle to let out a loud laugh, largely impartial on the outcome of events but eager to watch anyway.

With broad and determined movements, Pyrrha hauled the familiar yellow bowl over to set it on her lap, the ceramic clinking against her armor. She spared a quick glance for the growing pile of ingredients next to the box, before saying with heavy patience, "Well? Where's the recipe?"

"There is no recipe."

She should have expected it, but Ren's terse reply still made her falter. It wasn't _that_ hard to make pancakes, not when he'd already made them seven times this year, so it shouldn't be a surprise that he'd memorized it. But it still made it that much more difficult for her to chip in, and for a moment she hesitated, before rallying with a smile and a squaring of her shoulders. "That's all right. I'll stir."

Despite his best efforts, Pyrrha refused to budge on the subject, so it was with the utmost irritation that Ren began to measure the ingredients into the bowl. It was funny; Pyrrha was no genius at reading people, and in fact often blundered her way through interpersonal conflict with none of the grace she exhibited on the battlefield. And Ren was supposedly more of a mystery than most. ("I have _no_ idea what's going on with that dude," she remembered Jaune telling her, but then, he was even worse at this than she was.) Despite that, she could tell from his clipped movements that Ren was frustrated with her.

Of course, she couldn't figure out how to fix that, but being aware of it was a start.

After a long silence, where the only sounds were Nora slurping maple syrup through her straw, Pyrrha spoke.

"Maybe we could try putting things in the pancakes in future?" she suggested, watching the yellow-gold egg yolks slip down the side of the bowl to join the flour.

"Like chocolate!" Nora contributed brightly, rolling over to grin at the both of them in delight.

"Well, not exactly... Maybe something more healthy, like fruit chunks, or berries..." Pyrrha couldn't deny that she felt a little guilty about the unhealthy nature of the pancakes they were eating more than once a week. After all, they were supposed to be staying in shape, and while they more than worked it off every day in practice, it was still radically different from how Pyrrha had eaten in the past. Nora on the other hand seemed to run entirely on sugar, and boy did she run, zipping around like an excitable bee, so Pyrrha couldn't blame her for lobbying for more.

At first Pyrrha wasn't sure how her suggestion would go over, but when Ren cracked the next egg into the bowl, he paused to shake the last drops of yolk from the shells, thinking it over.

"If you want."

Despite the stern quality of those words, Pyrrha was fairly sure that his grumpiness had lessened, and any uncertainty was removed when Nora reached over to pat her on the shoulder with a syrup sticky hand, and then further when Ren handed her the big wooden spoon to stir.

She started to mix the ingredients together, watching the egg separate the flour into uneven clumps. "Next time I can crack the eggs," she said to Ren's back as he began to put everything away.

"Maybe," he replied, without much conviction.

"Next time I can stir!" Nora cheered, dropping the now-empty syrup bottle on the ground with a hollow thunk.

"No," they said in unison, which made Pyrrha laugh and Nora puff her cheeks at the both of them in an impressive pout.


End file.
